I absorb and discard a lot of cool, interesting, important, or outrageous "stuff" as I surf the internet... and simply don't make the effort to point it out.
A few days ago, I encountered the controversial dutch advertising for playstation. Somewhere, a debate was raging on whether this was ignorant racism, or well-executed 'disruptive' advertising courtesy of ad firm TBWA.
Anyway, I didn't blog it. Until now, when I encountered something elsewhere:
Ota Benga (c. 1884 – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 exhibit at the Bronx Zoo alongside an orangutan as an example of the evolutionary "missing link" between humans and apes.
The end of his story:
Ota Benga was caught between two worlds, unable to return to Africa, and viewed mainly as a curiosity in the U.S. On March 20 of 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and shot himself with a stolen pistol. The death certificate listed his name as "Otto Bingo."
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